


Back To Him

by SereneCalamity



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 Series - Kass Morgan
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Childhood Friends, F/M, First Time, Getting Together, mainly just fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-09
Updated: 2018-12-09
Packaged: 2019-09-14 18:23:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16917966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SereneCalamity/pseuds/SereneCalamity
Summary: Five times Bellamy leaves Clarke. And one time she comes to him.





	Back To Him

**Author's Note:**

> Haven't written Bellarke in a while, and sometimes I just need to revisit this couple that makes me both ridiculously angry that they're not together, and then ridiculously happy because of just who they are.  
> Disclaimer: I do not own anything.

1.

When Bellamy Blake was seven years old, he met a girl with long blonde hair and big blue eyes and the prettiest smile he had ever seen. When she laughed it sounded like musical notes and her whole face lit up like the sun. He thought that she looked like a princess and he told her so, multiple times. In fact, the nickname caught on.

They became best friends, even though they came from completely different backgrounds. Clarke Griffin's mother was a nurse and her father was a financial adviser at a bank. She was an only child and dressed in nice, clean clothes. She got good grades and her parents showered her in affection and attention. Bellamy's mother was a drunk who went through dead-end job after dead-end job and she was always late on the rent and the power bill. Half the time Bellamy had to wear the same clothes that he had worn the day before and even at the age of seven, he was the one cooking dinner and making sure his little sister, Octavia Blake, was bathed and had her hair brushed before she went to bed.

Just before Bellamy's eighth birthday, child services came and collected both him and his sister. Someone from the school had reported their mother after Bellamy continued to fall asleep in class. That paired together with a few reports from the preschool where Octavia was showing up with odd bruises and dirty clothes, was enough for their mother to be under probation and when she wasn't able to hold down a job, they had been taken away.

Bellamy hadn't even been allowed to say goodbye.

2.

Bellamy was thirteen when his mother had finally cleaned up her act enough for them to come back. It had been a hard couple of years, the pair of them getting shuffled between several group homes since they refused to be separated. Not that it hadn't been hard when they had been home with their mother, but it was harder without the comforting  _normal_  from when they were back at home.

And there was no Clarke.

But now they were back.

They weren't enrolled in school yet, it was only the second day back, but Bellamy had been watching the clock on the wall, waiting for it to roll onto quarter to four when the bus got back from the school.

 _Clarke's_  bus.

He had gone down to the Griffin house and knocked on the door and Abby had answered and given him a big hug. She had looked surprised that he was back, but she had given him a big smile and told him what time Clarke was due back, and that he could wait at the house if he wanted, or come back when the bus pulled up. Bellamy had gone back home to spend the afternoon with Octavia, and to wait for Clarke.

They got three days together.

Three days of reuniting and catching up and Bellamy remembering what it was like to be around his princess before his mother sat both him and Octavia down and told them that they were going to be moving away. Bellamy stared in shock as she explained that it would be best for all of them to get a fresh start, and she had gotten a job offer from one of her old friends.

Years later, Bellamy knew that it was the best move for his family, for his mothers sobriety and for Octavia's upbringing, but at the time, all he could think was that he was being ripped away from Clarke.  _Again_.

3.

When Bellamy was eighteen, he finally connected with Clarke again.

It wasn't that he hadn't wanted to before, it was just that life had gotten busy.

The move had been for the best, even if he had hated it at the start, and he had joined the basketball team and had been surprisingly good at it. He had gotten a part time job with a man named Marcus Kane who really took him under his wing and helped him learn a lot more than just his way around the engine of a car.

He also got a girlfriend, Echo Teles, so a lot of the time that wasn't spent at basketball practice and games, or at Kanes garage, was spent with her.

After he finished high school, he wanted to move back to Los Angeles. They hadn't actually moved that far away, but there was something about being back in the city that called to him. Octavia had dropped out of school when she was sixteen and moved back to the city with some friends, while Bellamy had felt an obligation to stay with his mother and make sure she was okay. She encouraged him to go and said that she was going to be just fine, and she  _finally_  convinced him. Echo didn't want to move, so they were going to try the long distance thing out. Kane had told him that he could find him a job with one of his friends, Theolonious Jaha, who ran another branch of the garage in central Los Angeles.

Bellamy had never been a fan of social media, but Octavia was, and she had already spoken with Clarke a few times, although she didn't tell Bellamy until he was back in the city, and Bellamy had felt so taken aback his heart actually began thudding in his chest. Octavia and Clarke had never been all that close, even though they were friendly, and the fact that his sister had spoken with Clarke before Bellamy after all these years made him feel... _Weird_.

Almost jealous? Which was stupid.

They met up in a coffee shop on a Saturday afternoon, and Bellamy knew in the instant that he saw her come through the door—wearing a black and white striped playsuit with her long blonde hair loose and flowing down her back and over her shoulders—that he was in love.

He had always been in love.

Maybe he hadn't understood it when he was a child, but he did now.

Clarke was all smiles and laughter and she ran to him when she spotted him at one of the back tables. She wrapped her arms around him and tucked her face into his neck as though this was something that they had always done, and Bellamy felt all the tension leave his body as he held her tightly.

They talked for  _hours_.

Clarke was addicted to coffee and she was on her third after the second hour, her mouth running at a hundred miles per hours. Bellamy just watched her in awe as she spoke, as she told him about her parents, she told him about her subjects at school, she told him about a job she had at an animal shelter. She asked about his mother and his sister, about his friends and about his job.

A little after five in the afternoon, a beautiful girl with caramel coloured hair came into the shop, and Bellamy barely paid her any attention until she came over to where they were sitting and rested a hand on Clarke's shoulder. Clarke looked up, startled, but when she saw the girl, she reached up and they kissed.

Bellamy hadn't really known what to say.

Of course she had someone—someone who was beautiful and clearly made her happy—and Bellamy was angry at himself for letting himself consider that maybe there was a chance for him to have something more than friendship.

Then he was angry at himself for not thinking that friendship was enough—because it  _was_.

It  _would_  be.

Bellamy managed to stick out another half an hour, and was introduced to Lexa Woods, but the obvious love and familiarity that was pulsing between them made him feel as though he was on the outside looking in. He told Clarke that they would need to stay in touch better this time, and then he had forced a smile at both of them before leaving the cafe, hands shoved in his pockets.

4.

Clarke had rung him in the middle of the night to tell him that her father had been killed in a car crash.

She had been in New York for over a year now, studying to be a teacher, and even though Bellamy  _really_  didn't like Facebook and the drama and constant updates into peoples lives that he  _really_  didn't need to know, he liked following her. She was mainly tagged in photos, and he loved seeing her smiling and laughing, even if he only got glimpses.

They hadn't spoken all that much, given how busy they both were, but she would give him a call every few months, and Bellamy made an effort to text her every couple of weeks. It wasn't as though they were best friends, not like they were when they were kids, but obviously they both felt that pull toward each other and they were trying to build something, even if it was difficult. She knew that he had been promoted to supervisor at the garage he was working at and that he and Echo had broken up nearly a year ago. He knew that she was in the top five percent of her classes and that she and Lexa had recently broken up and she was casually seeing a guy named Finn Collins.

He really hadn't been expecting himself to the be the first person she called after her mother had contacted her with the news.

But he was awake and driving to the airport the next morning to pick her up when she flew in, and then he stayed at the Griffin household for the next two nights, in the spare room, of course.

He felt a bit out of place, but when Clarke had finished her duties for the day, seeing to her relatives and helping with funeral arrangements, she came back to him, just wanting to sit, to hold his hand and  _breathe_.

Octavia came over a few times as well, and it seemed as though the girls had become closer than they had been before, which Bellamy liked.

It was the night of the funeral that things got a little out of hand.

Clarke got drunk.

 _Really_  drunk.

And she hadn't wanted to drink alone, so Bellamy had gotten drunk with her, although not  _quite_  as drunk as her.

They took a taxi back to her childhood home and he had gotten her upstairs to her room. Abby had been giving some sleeping tablets before they had gone out just to help her to calm down, and the rest of the house was silent as they stumbled into Clarke's bedroom. Bellamy was attempting to get her under the covers and take off her shoes, and then suddenly they were kissing.

They were kissing sloppily and clothes were coming off and they were falling back onto the bed that still had the pink, lace bedspread that Bellamy remembered her having when they were kids.

Afterwards, they both slept heavily.

Bellamy was woken up by his phone ringing incessantly. He groaned, his head throbbing, but when he felt movement next to him and realized that last night  _hadn't_  been a dream, and Clarke really  _was_ naked and cuddled up next to him, he quickly answered his phone, so as not to wake her. It was Jaha, telling him that he needed to be back at work. Bellamy checked his phone and saw it was just after nine in the morning. His boss had been very understanding about giving him time off, but this was the fourth day, and he understood he needed to go back.

He dressed quickly and quietly, and then stood over the bed, staring down at Clarke's sleeping figure. She had her arms tucked underneath the pillow, face buried in one arm, and Bellamy's heart swelled at how peaceful she looked, for the first time since he had seen her again. He didn't want to wake her, so he ripped a page out of a notepad at her desk and scrawled out a note, before kissing her temple and slipping out of the room.

5.

Octavia had sprung it as a surprise, telling Bellamy two days before they left that they were going to celebrate New Years with Clarke and her friends. Bellamy had known that Octavia was planning something, but he hadn't known what. He had actually thought that she was going to go off with Lincoln Whittle, her new boyfriend, but apparently they were  _all_  off to New York.

Bellamy had seen Clarke twice since the funeral, and each time she was looking stronger and better and he was glad. She deserved all the happiness in the world, and he knew what a hit she would have taken when her father had passed away—they had been so close. They hadn't talked much, though, not about anything important since they hadn't actually spent any proper time alone. He had seen her when she had come to Octavia's graduation from her hair dressing course, although she had spent most of the time with her mother rather than at the actual graduation day, and then he had seen her the day before Christmas, because she was spending Christmas with Abby.

They hadn't talked about that night, and contact was sporadic, although when they did talk, they spoke freely and it wasn't as though something was hanging over them, which he was glad about.

So they flew into New York and were picked up at the airport by Clarke's flatmate, Raven Reyes, because apparently Bellamy, Octavia and Lincoln showing up was just as much a surprise for Clarke as the whole trip had been for Bellamy.

Bellamy was glad that he wasn't the only one in the dark with all these plans, and he really hoped that there wasn't some guy or girl that was going to be with Clarke tonight.

He wasn't too sure he could deal with that, given the fact that the way he felt about her had settled very permanently inside of him since that night they had spent together.

But he shouldn't have been worried, because even though there was clearly a party going on when Raven brought them into the apartment, as soon as Clarke saw them, she was rushing over with a margarita spilling in one of her hands and her other arm stretching out toward them.

They spent the whole night together, even though there were clearly a lot of other people there that Clarke was good friends with. She spoke with some of them for a while but she was always at Bellamy's side.

At midnight, the pair of them watched fireworks going off from the fire escape, and Clarke leaned forward and kissed him.

It was soft and sweet and chaste, but it was the best kiss Bellamy had ever received—even better than when they had had sex.

They didn't say anything afterwards, Clarke just leaned heavily against him and they continued to watch the fireworks and the general night life of New York that was going on below them.

He was able to stay for three days, and they went sightseeing and Clarke took him and Octavia and Lincoln to her favourite places in the city, and even though there wasn't any more kissing, there were lingering touches, and fingers intertwined and swinging between them and arms around one another.

It was the happiest Bellamy had been in a  _long_  time.

When they had to leave, Clarke came with them to the airport, and when they hugged goodbye, her hands gripped each other behind his back, as though she didn't want him to leave.

Bellamy held her just as tight, until the last call for his flight was announced over the speakers.

+1

Bellamy was practically vibrating out of his skin as he waited in the arrivals lounge. He checked his watch even though there was a massive clock on the wall that declared the exact same time as his watch. He ran his hand through his hair and smoothed his hands over the navy shirt that he was wearing.

He had this  _feeling_.

His stomach was in knots and his breathing was coming out short and harsh.

Ever since New Years, things had felt...They had felt  _right_  between them.

Sure, they were still cities apart, but there was an end date that was so close.

Clarke had put in her notice at the school that she was teaching with so she was set to finish at the end of the semester, and she had interviews lined up with three different schools back in Los Angeles. That was why she was coming back—she had nailed the phone interviews, as expected, and now she was back for the in person ones. Even if she didn't get one of the three jobs that she was interviewing for, Clarke had said that she was definitely coming back—she had already resigned, and she wanted to be closer to her mother.

And Bellamy, she had admitted one night when she was out drinking with Raven and she had been texting him.

That had happened a lot.

Not so much the drinking, but the texting and the phone calls and the Skyping.

Daily.

It felt as though they were closer than they had been in years.

Maybe than  _ever_.

Bellamy knew that she had gone out on a couple of dates, just from some of the things she had said—not directly, but from the way she had tripped over a few words when he had asked her if she had any plans. It stung a bit, but he understood. He had slept with Echo a few times, but she had broken things off last month when she had gone back to another ex-boyfriend, who things seemed.

Last week, though, Clarke had brought up their kiss.

Their New Years one.

She said she thought about it a lot, and maybe they could talk about it when she came back for the week she was flying back for, to go to her job interviews and have a look at a couple of apartments. She had sounded tentative—for one of the first times since he had known her—when she added on ' _only if he wanted too_ '. Bellamy had tried not to sound too eager as he had replied, but in all honest truth, he had barely been able to stop smiling for the rest of the night.

Of course he wanted to talk about it.

He had been avoiding bringing it up because he hadn't want to screw up the good thing that they had had, but he had been dying to.

It had been even better that she had been the one to say something.

Bellamy snapped out of his thoughts when he heard an announcement coming through the speakers that Clarke's flight was unloading and would be coming through the luggage collection section. Bellamy swallowed thickly as he bounced from one foot to another. Clarke had said she was just bringing the on-board luggage, so she would come right through that section and coming toward the arrivals lounge. He fiddled with the hem of his shirt as he began to see people coming through. The first were a couple of harried looking business men with brief cases and then there was a gaggle of young girls in tiny outfits who were undoubtedly here on holiday. Then a family and then a few more girls and then...

"Clarke!" Bellamy called out, holding up a hand and waving it as he moved forward. Clarke's head jerked up, looking around for him. She was wearing jeans and a jumper that was a few sizes too big for her and she had no make up on and her hair was a little messy—also a whole lot shorter than he had ever seen it before, just above her shoulders, and there was a red streak in it.

She was fucking beautiful.

She still looked every bit of the princess that he had thought she was when he had first seen her.

Clarke's smile spread across her face and she practically pushed past the people in front of her to get toward Bellamy, breaking out into a jog with the overnight bag that was slung over her shoulders bouncing against her side. Bellamy ducked around a couple in front of him and Clarke practically flew into his arms.

"Oof!" Bellamy grunted as she smacked into him, throwing her full weight against him as she wrapped her arms around his neck. He let out a laugh at how tightly she was hugging him, but if he was being honest, he was squeezing her even tighter. He wasn't sure how long they were standing there, but when Clarke pulled back, her hands were still on his shoulders. She looked up at him and Bellamy could see her eyes were busy, processing a hundred things at once, if he knew her. Then suddenly, her eyes seemed to clear, and he saw her nose twitch in determination. She reached up and pushed their lips together.

Bellamy knew it was going to work this time.

There was going to be things that they had to get through, but they would work.

They kept on coming back together, and he wasn't going to let her slip through his fingers again.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think :)


End file.
